Australian woman dead - South Africa

[DandyDon]

Woman dies in KZN diving accident - KwaZulu-Natal | IOL News | IOL.co.za

Durban - A woman died after a decompression accident while she was scuba diving in Durban on Wednesday, the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) said.
“The 44-year-old Australian woman, reportedly now living in Durban... had, according to reports, been diving at depth, at a submarine wreck, 10km off-shore of Durban,” NSRI Durban station commander Clifford Ireland said in a statement.
“She reportedly surfaced at speed and this is believed to have caused a decompression accident.”
Ireland said reports suggested the woman was conscious on surfacing from the dive, but soon lapsed into unconsciousness and stopped breathing.
“Her fellow dive crew had initiated CPR... while raising the alarm and speedily heading towards our sea rescue base at the Port of Durban to rendezvous with the rescue teams.”
The woman's body was handed over to forensic pathologists, and an inquest docket was opened by police.
“While family of the deceased have arrived at the sea rescue base, and are being counselled by trauma counsellors, NSRI are not releasing the female's name as the matter is now in the care of the police,” Ireland said.

Edit: Significantly more info in this story, as it seems to have been a 100 meter dive: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-afr...es-after-deadly-ascent-1.1583128#.UkRXWT9jMTm

Durban - A DIVE to the HMS Otus submarine wreck 10km off the coast of Durban ended in tragedy on Wednesday when a female diver died after apparently ascending too quickly.
Annelie Wada, 44, an Australian who had immigrated to South Africa, had just completed a 100m dive to the recently discovered wreck with a group from Calypso Dive and Adventure. According to her Facebook page, it would seem this was to have been her first dive to 100m.
She had reportedly “surfaced at speed and this is believed to have caused a decompression accident”, said the National Sea Rescue Institute’s (NSRI) Durban station commander, Clifford Ireland.
It is not known at this stage what might have gone wrong. Diving to deep depths is highly technical and requires advanced skills. Divers spend four minutes going down to that depth, then 12 minutes on the bottom and about 130 minutes coming up in stages to stabilise their bodies.
On Wednesday, Ireland said reports had suggested Wada was conscious on surfacing from the dive but soon lapsed into unconsciousness, not breathing and pulseless.
“Her fellow dive crew had initiated CPR (and placed her on 100 percent oxygen therapy) while raising the alarm and speedily heading towards our sea rescue base at the Port of Durban to rendezvous with the rescue teams,” he said.
The Daily News had first reported on the wreck find in March when Durban deep-sea specialist divers, Patrick Voorma (owner of the Calypso Dive Centre at uShaka Marine World) and Allan Maclean, stumbled across the World War II submarine after searching for it for nine years.
Wada was on the team who went out with Voorma and Maclean on a special second dive to take photographs and video footage of the wreck.
She had completed her 200th dive, which was a 70m one, in August, which also was her qualifying dive for using Tri-mix and a rebreather. In March Voorma had explained that deep diving was difficult and very technical.
“We have to be very precise and highly skilled or we could lose our lives,” said Voorma at the time.
The Daily News had reported on preparations for a dive to such depths. It would start four days before when the team would start mixing and blending a combination of gases called Tri-mix (oxygen, nitrogen and helium).
Voorma had explained that once divers went to such depths they built up nitrogen and helium in their bodies and they had to get rid of these gases before they could safely resurface. Maclean had said coming up too soon would be like taking a can of fizzy soft drink, shaking it and opening it up immediately.
“That is exactly what would happen to us if we came up too soon. We could get an embolism (air bubble) in the brain,” he had said.
However, any number of factors could have contributed to Wada’s death, including a pre-existing medical condition.
The NSRI received the distress call at about 11.26am and Netcare 911 paramedics had started CPR at the base. “But despite extensive efforts to resuscitate the lady, she was declared dead by paramedics,” said Ireland.
He also said Wada was an experienced diver with a full technical “tri-mix” dive qualification.
The NSRI said her family were receiving trauma counselling.
On Thursday morning Voorma said he could not comment as he was on his way to the police station to make a statement. Celeste Voorma, Patrick Voorma’s wife, wrote to her friends on Facebook at about 6pm: “Such a sad day for such a lovely lady.”
Another message, posted by Patrick Voorma - hours before the fatal dive - read: “Ready for another 100 metres today. Conditions are looking great. HMS Otus here we come.”

 

[TSandM]

Another article on this: How wreck diver died - KwaZulu-Natal | IOL News | IOL.co.za

It appears that she had a lifetime total of about 200 dives. She had done a deep dive early in the year where she was uncomfortable with the depth. She lost buoyancy control during a gas switch. Her buddies suspect she had gas trapped in her backup wing (sounds like she was using a double bladder setup) and she vented the wrong one.

As with so many accidents, the root cause here isn't the dive in question.

 

[lv2dive]

That article is one of the saddest I've read. And I concur with your conclusion.

Another article on this: How wreck diver died - KwaZulu-Natal | IOL News | IOL.co.za

It appears that she had a lifetime total of about 200 dives. She had done a deep dive early in the year where she was uncomfortable with the depth. She lost buoyancy control during a gas switch. Her buddies suspect she had gas trapped in her backup wing (sounds like she was using a double bladder setup) and she vented the wrong one.

As with so many accidents, the root cause here isn't the dive in question.

 

[cerich]

Trying to understand what is wrong with her instructors and mentors that this happened.

There is no way somebody with that level of experience should be doing a dive like that, none.

 

[grf88]

It almost sounds like a "trust me dive".

 

[TSandM]

For anybody who isn't a technical diver, who is looking at this thread, here's a recap of the problems:

1. 100m is a BIG dive in anybody's book. Not only should anyone doing such a dive be able to handle routine matters like gas switches, they should be capable of a great deal more. If you have a problem at 100m, you have a LONG time to manage that problem before you can surface. Most technical training will have you doing gas switches with your mask off and missing a fin -- maybe not literally, but the amount of stress a diver needs to be able to handle on such a dive is fairly high, or they shouldn't contemplate it. Certainly a venting problem in a wing shouldn't result in an uncontrolled ascent.

2. 200 dives is awfully early in a diving career to be looking at this type of dive. Someone that relatively green who is doing this pretty much falls into one of two categories -- the inappropriately ambitious and cocky, and the diver who is being pushed or allowing peer pressure to influence decisions. The remark about being uncomfortable with the prior dive suggests to me that she was in the latter group, in which case both she and her dive buddies/mentors are at fault for getting her into a situation she wasn't ready to deal with.

3. One of the frequently quoted ideas of technical diving is the concept of keeping things simple . . . although I'm sure we could get into a big discussion of it, there are people who feel that double bladder wings are not optimal for precisely this reason -- it's too easy to get confused about where the gas is, or where a malfunction is if one occurs. There are ways around that -- for example, the Razor double bladder uses only an oral inflate tube for the backup bladder, so you pretty much CAN'T be confused about where you are putting your buoyancy gas -- but the bottom line is that this is a more complicated gear configuration, and if she chose to use it, she should have been drilled until perfect on where she had put her buoyancy gas, and how to deal with runaway inflators on both bladders.

4. One of the biggest issues in more complex, higher-risk diving is situational awareness. People new to the skills involved in tech diving often get very task-focused and lose awareness of depth, team, or time . . . Training, in addition to raising the stress level you can tolerate, is also aimed at building the diver's ability to keep track of multiple variables. One is depth, and in at least some technical training, only very small deviations from the desired depth (or schedule) are acceptable before the diver is not deemed to have reached the level of proficiency needed to get that card. This diver clearly let her buoyancy control issue go on until she couldn't solve it, and that's really low situational awareness. In addition, at 50m, the rate of expansion of gas in a BC bladder is pretty slow, and you have a LONG time to cope with the problem, even if you ended up going up 30 or 40 feet before you got it under control. That she was unable to do so argues for some degree of panic or paralysis, which you simply can't afford on such dives.

This is a profoundly sad story and makes me both angry that it could happen, and extremely grateful for the training I've had. My mentors and instructors would never have signed me off to do the dives I do, until I had met some fairly stringent criteria for both diving competence and attitude.

 

[xyrandomyx]

Wow. Sad. That wreck was only discovered in March this year (after being scuttled shortly after WWII). If I recall correctly from the article back then, it was at a depth of 105 metres -- as everyone's said, a very serious dive.

 

[Hatul]

I'm no technical diver, but this points out that underwater buoyancy is intrinsically unstable, in that as you ascend or descend it requires active deflation/inflation to prevent runaway ascent/descent. You can also halt that by finning against the movement but only it it's done early enough, past a certain point it's impossible to overcome the buoyancy change.

It's not clear why she could not empty her inflated wing and why should would not just try dumping air from both wings. If it's a case of a stuck exhaust valve, can she not just cut the inflator hose on the inflated wing? I assume she was using a drysuit which provides another buoyancy source.

 

[lv2dive]

I am not sure what you mean... Underwater buoyancy is anything but intrinsically unstable once it has been mastered. And one shouldn't be doing 100m dives until that is the case.

Edit: on retread: I see the explanation is that addition/subtraction of gas is required. I would disagree that makes buoyancy intrinsically unstable, rather that it simply requires buoyancy to be managed.

 

[MalibuJerry]

So, she had just completed tri-mix and rebreather and with 200 dives under he belt went off to do a 100 meter dive? Aside from the obvious which TS&M clearly outlined for those contemplating tech diving; why didn't anyone tell her, "not yet, you need to get a lot of dives at moderate depths done before you can go on this dive with us?" Shouldn't they have been concerned that she was not a fully qualified team member capable of helping them if they had an issue at depth? Also, was she on a rebreather? That would so compound things, new tri-mix diver, new rebreather diver, 100 meter dive, hey why not?